


It's Written in the Stars

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:17:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What’s that story from Greek mythology? People were once born with four arms, four legs, and two heads. Zeus feared their power, and he split them into two people, forced to search for the other half their entire life. Mortals have a phrase for this—your soul mate. Your other half, the person that completes your heart, all that sappy shit. Zeus intended for this search to be a struggle, but that’s not how it works anymore. It’s much, much easier to find your missing piece now. Your soul mate’s name is ‘burned’ into your skin from the time you are both alive, and it’s destiny for you to cross paths at some point—there are no star-crossed lovers in this world. This prevents heartbreak, the fear of divorce or living alone, one of the worst emotional pains ever experienced (save for death). Nothing is perfect, though, and there can always be blips in the system.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Written in the Stars

What’s that story from Greek mythology? People were once born with four arms, four legs, and two heads. Zeus feared their power, and he split them into two people, forced to search for the other half their entire life. Mortals have a phrase for this—your soul mate. Your other half, the person that completes your heart, all that sappy shit. Zeus intended for this search to be a struggle, but that’s not how it works anymore. It’s much, much easier to find your missing piece now. Your soul mate’s name is ‘burned’ into your skin from the time you are both alive, and it’s destiny for you to cross paths at some point—there are no star-crossed lovers in this world. This prevents heartbreak, the fear of divorce or living alone, one of the worst emotional pains ever experienced (save for death). Nothing is perfect, though, and there can always be blips in the system.

/ / /

Louis Tomlinson isn’t that old when the name first appears on his wrist, a toddler nearing three years of age when he wakes up and there’s suddenly a name on his wrist—a name that definitely wasn’t there when he went to bed. Frowning, he climbs out of his Superman-clad bed, dressed in red footie pajamas, and shuffles his way into the bathroom in the hall. Dragging the stool over to the sink (he’s almost tall enough, okay!), he scrubs and scrubs at the weird shapes on his wrist until his skin is raw and glowing, but the word he can’t read won’t budge. “Mummy!” he shouts frantically, climbing down off the stool and running downstairs to the kitchen, eyes wide when he finally slides to a stop on the linoleum.

“What is it, Lou Bear? What’s got you rushing in here this early in the morning when cartoons are on?” Jay asks, smiling and turning from where she’s cooking pancakes at the stove.

“There’s something on my wrist, mummy! I tried and tried to get it off but I just...can’t!” And she knows it’s serious because Louis never skips out on a chance to watch his favorite cartoons.

Jay grabs he son’s tiny hand in her own, flipping it over palm-up and grinning the second she sees what’s got her son in such a frazzled sate. “Troy, get in here!” she shouts, leaning down to place a kiss on the worrying toddler’s forehead. Louis, of course, thinks he’s in trouble because he’s somehow managed to get this thing on him, and he stands there with his feet pointed toward each other, doing his best not to look guilty.

When his daddy walks in, Louis stares up at him with wide eyes and tries to hide the culprit behind his back, because in toddler logic it always makes sense that if you can’t see it, it isn’t there. “What is it, Jay?” His mummy explains everything to Troy in a hushed voice that his little boy ears can’t hear, and then suddenly his dad is grinning, which means he can’t be in trouble.

“Louis, darling, why don’t you take a seat at the kitchen table?” He nods to his mummy, scrambling up onto the big boy seat and watching as both of his parents sit down across from him, suddenly starting to feel nervous again. “Boo Bear, that thing on your wrist is the same as what’s on mine and daddy’s wrist. It’s your soul mate, baby.” He’s heard about this, the ‘soul mate’ thing, because adults talk about it a lot at preschool, and his babysitter does too.

His parents spend a while explaining the whole thing to him, and by the end his little boy brain is swimming with information, and his head hurts, and he still doesn’t entirely understand how he can fall in love with a complete stranger just because his wrist says so. His parents just smile at him because they know it’s a lot to take in and suggest they go out to get ice cream in celebration (and of course he says yes because, hello, ice cream). While they’re walking to the ice cream parlor a few blocks away from his house, his mummy asks to see his wrist and Louis holds his arm up shyly, biting his lip and staring at his mum as she reads the name there. She smiles down at him, but there’s something weird about it, and then she’s whispering something to his father before they’re swinging him between them as they walk.

/ / /

After that day, his parents fight a lot. Louis doesn’t like it, and most of the time when they start shouting at each other he’ll hid in his room and cry with a pillow over his head. One day, seven months after the name first appeared on his wrist, he wakes up and his daddy is just gone, and his mummy’s wrist is suddenly blank. Jay explains to him that daddy is going on a very long vacation, and he may not be coming back. He knows that’s a lie, though, because his mummy’s wrist is empty where Troy’s name used to be.

Jay goes to the doctor, and they say that it’s an anomaly, that her wrist is suddenly empty. Soul mates are supposed to be for life, and she and Troy have somehow broken that, because she doesn’t have a soul mate anymore. It doesn’t last very long, though, because two years later Jay finds the name “Mark” on her wrist. It takes a while, but finally she meets Mark when Louis is seven.

Louis is confused when his mummy suddenly has a new husband, but Mark is nice to him and he treats his mum nice and that’s really all that the toddler cares about.

/ / /

When Louis turns nine, he’s got two sisters named Charlotte and Felicite (who he calls Lottie and Fliss), and there’s a new boy moving in to the empty house next door. His name is Harry Styles, he’s seven years old, he has this wild curly brown hair and these bright green eyes that are always wider than they need to be, and he’s very odd. His mum wants him to go and play with that Harry boy (because the name on his wrist is Harry, even though the last name hasn’t appeared yet), but he just knows this boy isn’t his soul mate. He’s way too young, and he’s too timid, and anyways his wrist says ‘Nick Grimshaw’ on it. He decides to go and play with the younger boy even though his mates might see him and tease him for being around someone who’s still stuck in primary school, but only because it’s better than helping his mum change the girls’ diapers and feed them. It doesn’t take too long for him to realize that Harry isn’t too bad even if he is only seven, and he promises to play with him again, and maybe they can invite Zayn too.

When Louis is ten, he and Harry are finally at the same school, even if they’re a grade apart and don’t have any classes together, and he sometimes walks the curly haired boy home and to the classes they have near each other. One day when he’s in History class, Louis learns about soul mates properly (since all he knew was what his mum had told him), and about the names on their wrists and why they’re there. He finds out that he’s the only person in their grade—and maybe the school—who doesn’t have a last name on his skin yet, and all the other kids tease him about it because he’s ‘different’ than them. He tells anyone that bothers him to fuck off (he heard his step dad say that once when he was mad at a person on the phone) and walks home with Harry, an arm slung over the shorter boy’s shoulder. He ends up spending even more time with Harry (and Zayn too, of course), and they quickly become the best of friends, the three of them becoming something akin to the three muskateers.

/ / /

When Louis is fifteen, he’s got four best mates instead of two. There’s Harry and Zayn, of course, and then a blonde haired, blue-eyed boy named Niall Horan from somewhere in Ireland (he pronounces it ‘Mullingaaahr’ and it always makes Louis laugh). He moved to Doncaster right before secondary school starts, and he got a job at the same record store as him and they’d instantly been friends. Then there’s Liam Payne, with floppy brown hair that’s like Harry’s, and big, brown eyes that make him look incredibly innocent. He’s from Wolverhampton, and he’s really shy around everyone expect their group of friends (especially around Zayn, because they’re soul mates and Zayn is a huge flirt who’s always torturing poor Liam, hanging all over him and always getting the boy to cuddle with him).

He has two more sisters—twins named Phoebe and Daisy—and Mark is gone too, his mum’s wrist left blank again. She’s always calling him “the man of the house”, which always makes Louis blush, but he’s more than willing to help take care of his sisters by babysitting them and changing diapers and taking them to the park.

They’re all in secondary school together (it’s Louis, Zayn, and Liam’s last year while Niall and Harry are both a grade below them), with Louis and Zayn playing first string on the school’s footie team, Liam is the captain of the swim team, and Harry and Niall just like to cheer them on during all their events.

One Sunday morning when he wakes up, there’s suddenly a full name on his wrist, but he knows it’s a mistake, it must be, because this isn’t possible. Louis does the same thing he did all those years ago—he scrubs and scrubs at his wrist until the skin is raw and there are tears dripping down his cheeks. Jay walks in when he doesn’t come down for breakfast and she finds him like that. She walks in, shutting the sink off and looking at Louis with worry in her eyes before glancing at his wrist. That has her immediately pulling him into a hug and whispering soothing things to him while soothing down his messy hair.

The name on his wrist is Harry Styles.

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys! this is my first time trying to write a fic, so feedback would be awesome. (: tell me if you'd want to read more xx
> 
> also, thanks to my betas ginny, sam, and megan. :*


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